How Could We Have Been So Blind? - Tehila Gimpel (Parsha Vayera): The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone a question that comes up again and again during our war here in Israel is how could our leaders have been so blind how could we have let the Hamas and the kisah be building up arms and tunnels all of these years how did the Army turn a blind eye even on the night of October 6th there's so much discourse in Israel even going on now as to how these red flags that were all over the place were just ignored how could we have been so blind you know there's this feeling that you get again and again hearing the stories of October 7th that people were just refusing to see what was right in front of their faces and in reading the stories of aam and Yak this week it hit me that the stories of our portion are exactly speaking to this issue both on the personal and National levels once I saw it it was so obvious that I couldn't unsee it that the theme of this entire portion is about willful blindness I want to talk to you for a second just about what willful blindness is in the laws you know I'm a lawyer and when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail so the first thing that I you know one of the first things I learned in law school in criminal law is the doctrine of willful blindness that is that people will often claim to have not been aware of something to be blind to it as it were as a way of avoiding responsibility like when you buy a Rolex on the street corner in Manhattan for a hundred bucks well I didn't know it was stolen or the store owner sells alcohol to someone who looks like they're 12 because they say they're 18 I didn't know you could have checked but you chose to be blind you chose to avoid the uncomfortable facts that you could have seen if You' open your eyes a little the law obviously discourages that kind of choice to ignore what you could know and says you can't use your intentional blindness as a way out of responsibility so as I'm reading the story the stories of our portion this week in Viera it is so obvious to me all of a sudden that this is a theme let's take a look in braet uh chapter 20 a takes Sarah and then Hashem appears to aiik in a dream and says you're going to die and a defends himself and he says H I didn't know I mean and it says in verse 5 did he not say to me she is my sister and she even said he is my brother with the innocence of my heart and the purity of my hands have I done this when I kidnapped that woman from the street I didn't know she was a married woman I was just thinking I was kidnapping a single woman and so you know Hashem lets him off the hook for the death penalty but it's obviously not a good thing he was doing Hashem could have said oh you know whoops you made an innocent mistake let her go he says you really do deserve to be punished he's spared because technically he didn't know exactly what he was doing and Hashem forgives him but this is obviously a case where if he would have just done the smallest bit of examining he would have been able to figure out that this woman was a married woman now let's look at aiik at the end of the portion Abraham says you know your servants have really been messing around with my Wells and he goes oh my God I had no idea my servants they were digging your wells oh such a big now he had all this surplus of water water and no idea where it was coming from and then again we have lo lo goes to sedom cuz there's good fertile land but he knows or he should know what an evil Community is in and even when the Angels tell him to leave they literally have to drag him out because of his Dilly dallying he chooses to be blind to the evil of the people around him and then look what happens to him with his daughters the Torah goes out of its way to tell us that on the one hand he didn't know he was drunk he didn't know what his daughters were doing in the cave on the mountain on the other hand the Torah is like don't marry into Ammon and Moab there is something wrong with them because come on maybe it could happen to you one time but two times you really didn't know you could have known something was fishy you know in that family situation don't tell me that you suspected nothing all these stories are essentially the same thing happening again and again in the portion the Torah is telling us that people don't know things that they with the tiniest bit of thought caution and examination really could have easily known but it was more comfortable profitable pleasurable to just not know and I'm even going to say this part with great caution maybe even Abraham himself was turning a Blind Eye in our portion Sarah sees that ishma is a bad influence on Yak but AB doesn't want to see it and then he turns to Hashem and Hashem says whatever Sarah tells you you should listen to her and yesi fer told me this on Shabbat Hashem doesn't just say yeah you have to send away ishma he's a bad influence he says listen to Sarah meaning you could have known this on your own remember Sarah told you about this you could have been aware of what was going going on and made the decision not needing prophecy even with your human eyes you just didn't want to see it it was too inconvenient and too painful to face so you turn a blind eye and you know for the whole tanak we see this time and time again uh people that really should have known what they were doing turning a blind eye to a reality that they wish that they didn't have to see and and it always leads to these very unfortunate events think about Yak not seeing aso's uh shortcomings yakob choosing to not really see the level of jealousy between the brothers and sending Yosef out unchaperoned to check on his brothers in the fields later in the book of Samuel in the high priest AI chooses not to see his son's indiscretions and the Torah will often even tell us that somebody who was blind in their spiritual blindness also manifested physically as physical blindness just to highlight the concept and so I think that there's something that the Torah is telling us here about choosing to be blind but then you have this counter story at the end of AA the story of the AA of the sacrif of yak the interpreters of the Torah the classical maim go back and forth back and forth did Yak know or not know that Abraham was taking him to be sacrificed what's interesting is that he's asking questions like where is the Lamb the answers are a little bit Shady a little Shifty and he goes on anyway Rashi and radak and the ramban they said of course he knew but he went willingly and then the iban Ezra abarbanel the rasham thei they say no no no Yak didn't know he really didn't know at all I think in light of this theme that's jumping out at us about willful blindness throughout the entire portion maybe everyone is writing away because just like low just like AI Mel maybe just like abah even with Ismael chose to be willfully blind he had a suspicion his question had been answered in a weird way he could have just dug a little bit more said wait a minute dad uh are you really getting a lamb but he didn't he chose to purposefully and intentionally not know not to investigate something that he could have very easily investigated but to move forward putting his suspicion out of his mind out of the front of his Consciousness and this story becomes one of the most profound emblematic stories of Faith the ultimate test to pass the test like of the greatest Faith the symbol of faith for all of history is the story of the sacrifice of Isaac and he says where's the lamb AB says Hashem will show the lamb my son just a little scratch at the surface he would have known the truth he chose to be blind blind to the risk to himself and to the self-sacrifice that was soon going to be asked of him and he just move forward to that mountain you know when it comes to our own well-being and our own risk everyone has a tendency to think 10 times about all the things that can go wrong right when we have a nice car we make sure to get every kind of insurance we think of all the possibilities when we have a nice house we get a security system we lock our doors we protect our valuables we check safety reviews on everything we do it's not that we have specific Intel that something bad is going to happen but we try to see 10 steps ahead examine all the risks when our own benefit is at risk when it comes to our pleasure and our interest we often on the other hand turn a blind eye to problems that are inconvenient for us to see the Torah portion is showing us that you need to do the exact opposite all of the bad stories are people who chose to turn a blind eye to what they should have known and ended up doing something that in the long term really came out poorly they should have known but they didn't want to Yak is teaching us to do the exact opposite when it comes to self-sacrifice that's for something greater that's being asked of you that's what Hashem is asking of you that's when he turns a blind eye he doesn't think about the pain that he's going to endure he doesn't ask questions that would allow him to escape and that's true in our personal lives and the place that we are as a nation you know when in our personal lives sometimes you know you have to do something and it's the right thing there's no way to do it without choosing to be willfully blind when you get married when you have children don't tell me that you can't do a little research on chat GPT or what are the divorce rates what are the disease rates that children can have what are the hardships that you can endure in family life but you move forward choose to be blind when you need to follow your truth if maybe that's leaving things that you've been taught your whole life or moving to Israel whatever it is you have to choose to be blind choose to not think about all of the hardships you're going to likely encounter and only focus on that goal focus on getting to the mountain but when it's your own self-interest the Torah is teaching us that that is the place to be super Vigilant and resist the urge to be blind it's so easy to be comfortable and to choose not to see the neighbor that their kids aren't doing so well not to pay attention to that shady business deal that might be going on in your business just to ignore what's inconvenient the Torah is saying those are the places that you have to open your eyes and not be blind like L blind like Ai and when we take it to the National level in the fight for Israel right now our entire nation is called upon to be blind to the dangers on the of the of the mission that Hashem is sending us on who could be crazy enough to come after the Holocaust to begin with to establish a Jewish homeland surrounded by countries that want to kill you to a Barren land that hadn't borne fruit in 2,000 years you had to choose to be blind to all of the logical things that you should have been afraid of to make Aliah you have to blind yourself to the difficulties that you know you're going to face in your income and in learning a new language because you know it's the right thing I look at every mother who sends their child right now to Gaza or to Leb Lebanon do they not know the risks how do these superhuman people just these moms go to work and cook dinner and be normal they're forced to be like Yak that says uh where's the lamb um okay Hashem is going to show you the lamb and just keep on walking without stopping to be afraid and on the national level our leadership was so blind for so long to the reality that was just in plain sight all for the sake of making everything fit conveniently into their ideology and political interest you know 19 years ago so many of us were screaming in the streets about the dangers of handing over Gaza to terrorists no one wanted to see it for years people are saying they're building tunnels they're amassing weapons in Gaza in the northern B border wake up but it didn't fit with the narrative that the world wanted us to have that the UN wanted us to have the US Europe the media two-state solution it just didn't fit so we made ourselves blind you know the youngest babies that were ripped out of their mother's arms and thrown onto buses and gush katif 19 years ago they turned 18 on October 7th and were enlisted to go into Gaza a year ago the the same place that they were torn from they now have to risk their lives to clean up the mess that was blindlessly and recklessly made you know the symbol for the fight over gush katif was the orange ribbon that we all waved we had them on our cars on our wrists and you surely remember and today I saw a picture of terrorists that were just captured in Gaza miraculous ly and these these terrorists actually someone blindfolded them as they get blindfolded when they're arrested with the orange ribbons that look just like the orange ribbons of gush katif and it's like the symbolism is too powerful it's like saying to us you chose to be blind back then now you're going to have to be dealing with these terrorists that you were blind to seeing now how do you know when you're being honest with yourself though how do you know when you're supposed to look deeper or supposed to be willfully blind I think the key is hidden right here in plain sight still in the sacrifice story and you can see it in the actions of Abraham because the word to see is the loudest Motif in this story when you actually read the story of the AA of the sacrifice of yak it is all about what you are willing to see or not see Abraham it says lifted his eyes and saw the mountain from afar his vision was set clearly on following hashem's directions how convenient would it have been for Abraham to procrastinate a little sorry Hashem I got lost I stumbled around a bit he sees it from far away and he moves forward and then Yak asks uh where's the lamb abam says Hashem Hashem will see to the lamb this word again of seeing he goes I don't know exactly what's going to happen for for sure but Hashem will show me what needs to be done he'll decide what the lamb needs to be but then mid sacrifice what does it say he's trying to do exactly what Hashem asked for him and it says again he lifted his eyes and he sees the ram the ram is stuck Abraham is not stuck abah is not stuck in his ways he's continuing to look for hashem's guidance even when he thinks he knows what he's supposed to do whether it's uncomfortable or whether it is comfortable he doesn't get stuck in what he thinks is the truth he continually looks up raises his eyes up to Hashem to see what the truth is and what's so incredible is that this mountain where the sacrifice almost takes place is Mount Mariah gets a new name right in verse 14 in chapter 22 it says and Abraham named that place the Lord will see as it is said to this day on the mountain the Lord will be seen But the word here is very very interesting it says he names the mount Mariah har Hashem but the word is very interesting the word you're at is Al he now in the Torah we don't have the dots that teach us how to pronounce the word that's passed down from generation to generation those specific letters can have three meanings at the same time it can be or Y meaning either it could mean Hashem will be seen or Hashem will see you or Hashem will show you in the Torah the act the Torah scroll that doesn't have all of the pronunciations dotted in actually all three of those pronunciations could be there but these three meanings are all interconnected Hashem appears to you and you see Hashem and in that relationship Hashem will show you and guide your life he will show you what you need to do when you're lost and wandering Hashem Hashem will show you the way to the goal that you're being called to achieve and what's so cool is that in the entire portion is called parat V which means to be from from the idea of Hashem appearing to but also means V means to see it's like a flashing light saying this whole portion is going to teach you about what to see and what not to see when do you need to underthink and just put on your blinders and say I am moving forward without doing all the calculations and when do you need to overthink when do you need to say am I being uh self-interested here do I need to open my eyes to a deeper issue that's going on and when Abraham and Yak are here they're showing us the model we see that we can seek Hashem and say I am willing to open my eyes to what you demand of me whether I like it or not I'm going to open my eyes to doing that thing that I'm being called to do whether it's convenient or inconvenient but when it comes to my own sacrifices that is where I'm going to use the skill of willful blindness the human ability to ignore inconvenient truths to allow me to push forward so this portion is setting such a challenge for us about what to see and what not to see what are the places in our lives that we know we're sweeping things under the rug that we shouldn't be and what are the places in our Liv lives that we know we should be doing something but we're allowing our overthinking our overe examining our fears to deter us from doing it it's giving us the answer the answer is Haram the mountain of Hashem that's called Hashem knowing that we go towards this mountain with an honest and open heart because Hashem when we ask Hashem to show us the way we say to ourselves we're going to follow what Hashem tells us to do with an open and honest heart voluntarily accepting upon ourselves to follow wherever that leads us just like Abraham and with the strength of yak to close ourself off to those fears to the overe examining and just say I am moving forward and constantly seeking out hashem's guidance in my life so with that I wish everybody a great week bye guys hey this is Jeremy gimpel if you enjoyed that content then you will enjoy all the content on the landof Israel Network at www.the landof israel.com and if you want to take it up a level you can join our Global community of people that learn together that work together that are all a part of a global movement of over 1,000 families all over the world and you can join the land of Israel Fellowship check it out on the landof israel.com [Music]